“Trail Daze”

AT Day 38

Miles: 0

Total Miles: 661.87

(Angel’s Rest Hostel [Again])

How many times in these journals will I say that I’m trying to do something impossible? Trying to put into words and onto the page things that are so big that they don’t fit into words or onto the page. Still, there’s some strange pleasure in attempting it. Or maybe it’s the feeling that if I didn’t at least try, then it’s all at a loss.

This weekend was the Damascus Trail Days event.

It turned out to be much, much more than I was expecting.

How do I tell the story? Let me count the ways…

Thursday:

I arrived at the event on Thursday. It was mostly quiet. Equipment vendors setting up, many of the attendees staring to arrive.

But for the most part, Thursday felt calm and quiet. It was much less than I was told to expect. The music was quiet, camps were calm, and the fires were small. There were a lot of people drinking, even on Thursday, but to call it one of the calmest festival days that I’ve ever attended would not be an exaggeration.

To be honest, I was feeling disappointed by the end of Thursday. I wrote to my friend, who was going to join me for Friday and Saturday, that the energy was low and that he wasn’t missing much by not attending that night.

I felt alone in it. As more people started to arrive, it felt more isolating, feeling like the others were connecting with one another while I stayed feeling separate. To be clear, there were those who I was able to make conversation with, but for the most part it didn’t feel deep or meaningful.

That day I spent about an hour in the library writing about that loneliness. Wondering if it’s something that I’d be lost within for the rest of the hike.

Friday:

Friday was “business day.” There were several of us who had plans to party that evening, but I had been planning to potentially invest in some new equipment from some of the vendors that I’ll carry with me for the rest of the trail. I didn’t want to be making big purchases while or after a long night of music, dancing, and mind alteration, so Friday was “business day.”

I spent a lot of the day wandering back and forth amongst the vendor tents, asking more and more detailed questions about down quilt fill counts, comparative material weight, and costs of every little thing you can think of having to do with backpacking.

The two big things that I had in mind were a new tent (a 1-man tent by Hyperlite that is super light weight and extremely fast setup. It’s something I’ve been wanting to get for a long time, but I wanted to wait to see all the tents in person and talk to the company representatives before buying. I also wanted to get a new 40′ quilt to replace my 15′ sleeping bag. It’s become warm on the Appalachian Trail, and my bag was too much. Also, it had so many miles on it that it was stating to fall apart. It needed to be replaced.

There were other odds and ends as well, but those were the big ones.

In the end I spent around $1K on new gear and sent some of my heavier gear home.

That… is the “boring part of Friday.”

We all three took Molly at 6pm on Friday. It was a hiker named “Three AM,” my friend from out of state, and myself.

What unfolded for the rest of the night was simply magic.

There’s more than I’ll ever be able to share. But we danced. We laughed. We wandered the camps. We sat in the glow of campfires.

But none of it actually filled me up. It all felt a bit like the night before. It felt tame. It felt lack-luster.

There came a point in the evening where I started to feel like it was time to wind down, but one of my two friends suggested one more trip to the biggest bonfire of the event. We’d been there several times before, but he was insistent that we go back to our camp, get camp chairs, and carry them back to the big fire.

I hesitantly obliged and followed him over.

And that’s when my weekend changed.

I’m still not fully convinced that the girl was anything but a hallucination. How her role in my weekend could have possibly been real is beyond me. Much more likely that it was all a dream.

In my mind’s eye, she never even arrived to the fire. She was already there. Maybe she’d been there all along. How someone as beautiful as her could have been there, in the glow of a fire, without my seeing her is beyond me. But somehow that’s what seems to have happened.

There were several of us there, all laughing and taking in the warmth from the fire. But after around 10 or 15 minutes, I turned and realized that there was someone just behind me and to my right–swinging in some sort of strange camp chair, that acted more like a hammock.

I saw her lost in the fire, like I’ve found myself many times over, and something drew me in to engage. It was probably the Molly. Or more likely still, it was that as well as something more.

I started off with something silly and without context. I think that I said, “Hey there lady in the swingy-chair. How’s your Trail Days weekend going so far?”

And from that moment forward, my world shifted.

We talked for hours, and I watched the reflection of the bonfire in her eyes.

She was quiet and soft spoken, with a whole world to share. She told me that she was on mushrooms and I told her that I was as well. I told her there was Molly too, and we continued to talk.

I told her that I found her beautiful and asked if I could hold her hand. By the time more wood was on the fire I was asking if I could kiss her.

She came into my weekend completely and absolutely unexpected.

When I asked her name, she looked down the length of her long legs and to the cowboy boots on her feet.

“Boots.”

We talked until the night became late and turned into the next day. We walked to her tent. I kissed her, and we said goodnight.

That night, after I got back to my new 1-man tent, the weather turned. It started to storm. First there was lightning, then wind, then torrential rain.

I loved it though. My heart was glowing and it was exciting to ride out weather in my new tent–to have proof that it would withstand anything that I’m going to see out here on trail.

It stormed through the night, and only cleared with the rising of Saturday’s sun.

Saturday:

If I were still as naive as I used to be, then I would have rushed back out in the morning to try and find “Boots,” but that’s not the way that things happened.

In fact, I thought I might have lost our connection with the sunrise. The night before I’d asked for her number, and decided to just call my own phone from hers so that I’d have her number. However, I forgot that my phone had been off and so the call never went through, and as such, I didn’t have her number to try and reconnect.

I would have been more flustered, but my friend from out of town and I both agreed to go to breakfast and do some more shopping at the gear booths that morning. So long story made short, one thing led to the next, and it was mid afternoon already without my ever having found her.

There was a hiker parade that I attended, and I just want to say that the city of Damascus does an AMAZING job of putting together the Trail Days event. Even though there is a wild party out in the forest at night, the day time activities were all quite good. I got to attend a presentation on Tick Bite Prevention, and even just talking with all the gear vendors was worth it.

Other than that storm on Friday night, the weather stayed mostly sunny and warm. It was wonderful!

When I went back to her tent, she was already gone. But I was able to track her down by leaving one of my cards at her tent, beside the swingy chair that she’d been rocking in the night before.

Soon afterwords, she texted and we reconnected.

This is where I’d like to point out that the Appalachain Trail continues to reaffirm my belief in a higher power. Not only that–a belief in a Higher Power that has a wicked sense of humor!

Now, you remember me telling about my new 1-man tent? Well I’ve been in a 2-man tent for literally 20 years! I have told people time and time again that I believe that 1 man tents are just too small and that one person should have a 2-man tent, just to have the little bit of extra room to move around. ESPECIALLY if you’re going to be living out of that tent for the whole summer, like we are out here on a thru trail.

I had sent my 2-man tent home with my buddy from out of town that morning. I had my new 1-man tent set up for LESS THAN 24 hours. And wouldn’t you know that this is the day that I end up bringing company into my tent with me!

We started by the fire when we first reconnected on Saturday, but eventually wandered around the forest, out to the open grass of Tent City, and laid in the grass. We both took a dose of mushrooms and watched the clouds drift by in a mostly blue sky.

I hadn’t had that experience of laying in the grass and watching passing clouds in years. The last time I remember it was maybe 2012. It had been a long time.

We held one another closer until it no longer felt appropriate to be any closer without being in the privacy of a tent.

And we moved from there into the snug privacy of my new 1-man Hyperlite tent.

For the record: Two people can fit into a 1-man tent. But condensation accumulates. And mitigations must be strong.

I told her that I wanted to ruin my whole life for her. End my hike and chase her back down to Tennessee (where she lives with her two kids). I never would have done it, but it was fun to get lost in the fantasy of “what if.” We both shared our lives together. we ate more mushrooms and she leaned against me while we went back to the same fire where we’d met the night before. I watched the reflection of fire in her eyes.

Her skin smelled of campfire smoke and there was fire in her eyes. I took it to mean that she could burn down my whole world if I let her.

At one point I asked about her necklace and she told me it was moldivite. It shocked me, and I reached to the pendent hanging from my own neck. Also moldivite.

She looked a spitting image of the girl who I almost married in 2023–the girl who almost led me to dismantling my entire life after she ended things.

Long legs. A delicate smile. And fire in her eyes.

I could write on and on about the fire in her eyes.

She was beautiful, but I could see that if I let her, she could have destroyed my world.

I fell in love with her for the weekend, and watched as she almost seemed like she wanted to do the same.

But lives are complicated and ways lead to ways.

We retired into her tent for the night–not for sex, but to hold one another one more time before the rising of the next sun and the parting of our ways.

Sunday:

It’s Sunday now, and everything feels like a blur.

I spent what time I could with the girl named “Boots” who turned my Trail Days into a whirlwind. We were both tired though. We were both in a daze.

I helped her pack her tent. I packed my own. I kissed her and told her that I hope that we see one another again.

Part of me feels like how love always makes the heart feel–like she’s what I’m supposed to do with my life moving forward. But at the same time, I know the context of our meeting. I’m going north. She lives south. At the end of this trail, I have had no plans to return to her state of Tennessee.

We both have desire to see one another again.

Maybe we will.

I want to try.

I told her that I’ll cry once she’s gone and I will tomorrow, once I’m back to trail.

For now I’m back at Angel’s Rest hostel. I had plans to return to trail, but after this weekend, I needed to rest and relax before going back into the miles. My heart and my mind and my soul all ache. But I don’t regret meeting her.

I know that if things are meant to be, then they’ll work out.

For now, I’m grateful for the time that we had together, the new gear that I got to pick up at the Trail Days event, and the knowledge that two people do in fact fit into a 1-man tent if the motivations are strong.

I return to trail in the morning.

With a warm heart,

Wormwood.

Out.